A Willow
by Gohan'slittlebro47
Summary: You know the old saying? The one about how the willow bends, but the oak snaps? Well, I won’t be the oak, no matter what. People want a savior, but they need someone to be strong for them. You can’t be strong for anyone if you're broken. UPDATED!
1. Innocence deprived

_"You know the old saying? The one about how the willow bends, but the oak snaps? Well, I won't be the oak, no matter what. People want a savior; they need someone to be strong for them. You can't be strong if you're broken. You can be strong when you're hurt, you can even be strong when you're beaten. In fact, if you act beaten, all the better. Always let your enemies underestimate you, but never let them overestimate."_

* * *

Harry Potter was no ordinary boy. He wasn't extraordinary. He wasn't special. No, he was anti-ordinary. Ordinary hated him with a passion.

Tug, pull, place, repeat.

Harry didn't even bother to wipe the sweat out of his eyes as he worked. The garden had gone to hell and back, as it always did while he was away at Hogwarts. Usually he would at the very least take a break and try to get something to eat. He couldn't even feel hungry anymore. Feelings seemed to have fled him, probably looking for a safer haven than Harry Potter.

When he was young, he was abused, hated by his own family. However, he never knew why. No, Harry didn't know why until he was eleven.

That morning Aunt Petunia had told him to weed the garden, and that she expected it done by the end of the day. Oh sure, she knew that is practically impossible to finish that amount of work by the end of the day, but hey, who cared if her worthless freak of a nephew didn't get dinner for neglecting his chores?

Apparently nobody. Harry hadn't received a single letter in the three weeks since he had gotten back. He'd sent his letter every three days to those who had told him to, but he never got a reply. Hedwig would come back with nothing every time, no matter what Harry wrote. So he had given up. All he wrote in his letters now were: Fine.

He was something most considered unbelievable, but most who knew who he was considered him special for something that had happened when he wasn't even one. His brain had barely been formed then, how could something back then have made him special?

Some may have thought the young man pitied himself. Those were the ones who pulled their children away from the crazy looking fifteen-year old with bags under his eyes, and walked on the other side of the street to avoid him. But the truth was, he didn't pity himself, and if he had, he would have more right to do so than anyone else.

His parents had been murdered. That's what had happened. That's what had happened to make him revered. His parents were dead, and he wasn't. And his 'family' hated him for what he was.

He was Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived, but who would rather be the Boy-Who-Died. He had no friends, apparently, seeing as no one sent him anything, and was sure he was slowly going insane. But that didn't matter as long as those he fought for didn't see him being weak. No, he couldn't cry. The world didn't need him. What they needed was a hero.

Harry Potter was a wizard.

A wizard who lived in circumstances that seemed to defy all logic. How could so much have been set on him before he could even walk?

He had gone to a school, a school for magic, for five years. Each year, something horrible happened to him, and usually his friends, at what was considered the safest place in the world. It happened at the school of Hogwarts, under the wing of Albus Dumbledore, a wizard revered even more than Harry Potter.

He endured, ridicule, hate, pain, and annoyingly noisy crowds. He fought for people that gave him more than enough reason to simply walk away, to leave them to fight their own battles. But he didn't. And then, last year, his fifth year of being taught at Hogwarts, the final thread connecting him to being a normal child was broken.

He watched somebody he loved more than anyone else do something that struck something inside of him, something deeper than Harry had ever felt before. He watched Sirius die.

Harry knew that life wouldn't get better for him after the war that had started years before Harry's time had ended. If he lived through it, of course. He would be hailed as a hero by some, for watching friends die, for killing human beings for them, while shunned by others, for those same reasons. A murderer was a murderer, no matter whom he killed. He would always be an icon, until he was murdered because he had killed someone's master.

What was the point of trying to be happy, when another tragedy was waiting around the corner for him? No, he had resigned himself to taking the weight of the world on his shoulders, as long as he could take a little bit of weight off of some one else's.

Harry reached for the next weed, but only grasped air. Looking around, Harry saw the setting sun, and by the twilight saw a clean, orderly garden with not a weed in sight, except for the huge pile of them next to the bags he would have to stuff them in before setting them by the curb. He would do that after eating something.

When he walked into the house, he saw a cold slice of ham, a thin piece of stale white bread, and two apples waiting for him on the table. Dryly, he thought that the only reason he had that much food was because he had missed all of the other meals. He had started weeding at seven A.M. and finished at nine P.M. Weeding was a surprisingly hard work, but Harry didn't even acknowledge the burning in his muscles.

After all, he'd felt much worse.

After he finished his meal, he went back outside in the dark, placed the weeds into the bags, carried the very heavy, very full bags out tot he curb, and went back inside. He walked past the living room, where Dudley, his beefy whale of a cousin, was watching what looked like some low-class action movie, which was assured to have something inappropriate for Dudley's age somewhere in it, and fell onto his bed.

* * *

_He walked through the graveyard, ignoring the small fog that blocked his own feet from his view. He heard his name called, and turned towards the haunting voice. After an eternity of moving, he saw a headstone entitled:_

_**Cedric Diggory**_

_Loyal friend,_

_Fearless leader,_

_Destroyed by a murderer._

_Destroyed by Harry Potter._

_"No…" Harry moaned. He felt a searing pain flash through the lightning shaped scar on his forehead, and a boy, who would have soon been a man, rose out of the grave, pale, clammy, with maggots worming their ways out of his eyes. Cedric stared blindly in front of him, and rasped in a voice laced with pain, "Harry… Harry… Why did you kill me? You could have stopped him. You're supposed to help us. You're supposed to stop him, but you didn't, did you?" _

_Cedric was slowly morphing into Voldemort, grotesque, with flaming red eyes. Harry felt like he was burning under the demon's gaze. "No, you didn't. Again, you were too weak, too late. What's your excuse this time?" _

_Sirius glared at him, long, mangy hair knotted above a rotting form, from his spot above the headstone. "You let me die. Who will you let get hurt next time? Who will you kill next time? It's your fault. You're the murderer.

* * *

_

Harry sat bolt upright in his bed, barely clapping his hand to his mouth fast enough to stop the scream that threatened to rip out.

Harry looked at the clock on his nightstand. _2:30 P.M._ Well that was surprising. He guessed the reason he had been allowed to sleep so late because there weren't anymore reasonable jobs left for his relatives to give him.

Harry got up and stretched, shrugged on the shirt that Dudley had outgrown when he was thirteen, and had to resort to tying his belt on, as there weren't any holes far enough back on the belt when he tightened it around his pants. _Wow, this belt must've been custom made to be so large. I don't think they normally make elephant-sized belts, but Dudley definitely needs them. _This was an unsually humourus thought, considering it came from Harry, but it wasn't meant in jest.

Harry grabbed the small book he had left on his nightstand the day before and headed out to the park. He had to admit, he looked the part of a child who went to St. Brutus's Center for Incurably Criminal Boys, as his uncle took sadistic joy in telling everyone. Dark bags under empty eyes, nearly skinny enough to pass as anorexic, which wasn't helped by the fact that he wore clothes eleven sizes to large that were ragged, dirty, and patched. Getting Dudley's hand-me-downs was not a benefit for anything.

When he got to the park, parents ushered their children away from him hurriedly, abandoning the swings when it became clear that that was where he was headed. He ignored the glaring parent and didn't respond to the unsure children. A few smiled at him, but he didn't even look at them, because he knew that their parents would get scared and take their children away while scolding them if he so much as glanced at them.

Untrue words always seemed to spread about him faster than anything, and none of it ever welcome.

He sat on the chairs, and began to read, but in truth he barely noticed the words laid out before him. Rather, he allowed his mind to be blank, giving it a respite to the stress it under took regularly. Harry actually felt sorry for his mind. Even that took a beating because it was connected to Harry Potter.

Suddenly, a small commotion caught his eye. A small girl was standing protectively over what seemed to be her older brother, who was sprawled out on the ground. Surrounding her were four bullies from the school that most children in Little Whinging attended. Harry thought two of them were Piers and Brend, both of them part of his cousin Dudley's gang.

They were standing next to a large sandbox, which had at one time been used as a urinal for Dudley's gang, and after the first child got a disease from playing in it, no parent allowed their children near it.

As he studied them, he saw some blood on the older boy's leg and head, and Harry stood as the four boys closed in on the girl. One of the guys facing away from Harry reached out and backhanded the girl, and then Harry noticed a steely glint in Piers hand. A knife.

In ten quick strides Harry closed the distance between him and the small group, and with a quick punch to the wrist, sent the knife out of Piers bony hand, spinning to the ground three feet away. As the four stared at him in shock, Harry spun around and punched one of the boys he didn't recognize in the gut. He dropped like a rock, gasping for air.

Suddenly Brend was on him, and this boy was large. Not large like Dudley, but large as in a foot taller than kids his age, a fifty pounds heavier, and all muscle. Harry knew that struggling wouldn't get him anywhere, so instead of trying to break out of the headlock he was in, Harry backpedaled. Brend slammed into the telephone pole behind him, and let go of Harry as he slumped to the ground.

By then the two other boys had recovered and Piers dived at Harry while the other one went for the knife. Harry hiked his knee up and jumped, and Piers smacked face first into his knee, making a satisfying cruch as Piers' nose was crushed. The other boy, Jack, had the knife now, and was slowly circling Harry. Looking behind Jack, Harry saw the sandbox.

Jack lunged forward, holding the knife straight out and intent on skewering Harry in one go; Harry sidestepped and took a jump into the sandbox.

"You wanna pway in the sandbox, Hawwy? Aw, poor little baby, so scwared," Jack taunted. Unfortunately for him, that was the worst thing he could have done. After seeing Sirius, his closest family, being murdered by Bellatrix Lestrange, Sirius's own family, a baby voice taunting him in a voice as Bellatrix always used set him off automatically.

Jack jumped at him again, this time slashing, and Harry sidestepped again and shoved Jack down. Harry kicked a cloud of sand into Jack's face, effectively blinding him, and slammed his shoe into the small of his back, just to the left of the spine. Jack gasped and fainted from the pain.

All four boys lay on the ground unmoving, though it was obvious they were all alive, simply unconscious. _They'd probably die from a second under a Crucio._

Abandoning that thought, Harry hurried over to the girl, worried that maybe the boy who had hit her had held a knife or anything else dangerous. She looked up at him, wide-eyed, on the verge of tears. When he reached out to help her up, she recoiled in fear. He sighed.

"Don't worry, I'm just trying to help. I promise I won't hurt you," Harry said, putting as much comfort and reassurance in his voice as he could.

He reached out again, and she let him help her to her feet, though he had to keep a hand on her shoulder to keep her from falling down. She had a gash on her arm from where she had landed on a rock, and was apparently already feeling the effects of blood loss.

She whispered, "What about Dane?" Harry took Dane to be the boy on the ground, and knelt down to check on him, letting the girl lean against him as a support. Harry was surprised to see the boy's eyes wide open when he turned him over, even more so when a hand caught his wrist. Apparently the boy wasn't unconscious.

"Shhhh, it's okay Dane, I'm just going to help you. I need to make sure you're okay." The boy's eyes flicked over to the girl, who nodded. He let his hand drop. Harry pulled the boy up and examined him. There was a tear in his clothes, through which you could see a shallow cut. He had a small gash above his left eye, and a well on his side. His foot was bent at an awkward angle.

Dane reached up to wipe away the blood leaking into his eyes, but Harry stopped him. "Don't. Cuts on your head bleed a lot. Wiping it won't do anything. Here." Harry picked up the knife, and, ignoring the immediate flinches, Harry cut off a strip of his shirt and tied it around the boy's head, after using the front of his shirt to wipe the boy's head. He told the Dane to hold his hand to the cloth above the cut and press on it to stop the bleeding, or it could get dangerous.

With a hand under Dane's arm, and carrying the girl in the other, Harry took a step forward, before realizing he had no idea where their parent were. All of the parents had been led away by the children, who had run as soon as they had seen the four members of Dudley's gang, so nobody had even noticed the whole episode.

Suddenly a scream sounded from across the park. _That answers that._

Harry turned to face the running parents. As the father skidded to a stop, Harry opened his mouth to tell him what happened, but was stopped by the impact of a fist to his jaw. Harry stumbled back a few steps, but didn't let go of either child. "Do you want me to drop them?!?" Harry said in a scathing tone, trying to ignore the pain flaring in what was most likely a broken jaw.

The man took in the sight of the four surrounding boys, and the piece of shirt wrapped around his child's bleeding forehead, and his eyes widened. "Oh my god, I'm so sorry! Here, let me take them." He reached out and picked the girl out of Harry's arms and took the boy's arm.

"What happened?" gasped the mother.

Harry grimaced. "Saw kids hurting boy and girl. Stepped in and stopped them. Tied piece of shirt around boy's head." Harry pointed to his rapidly swelling jaw. "Can't talk."

The man's eyes got even bigger, and he began apologizing profusely. Harry waved him off and began to limp back home.

"Wait! What are you doing? I must've broken your jaw! You have to go to a hospital!"

"Not to mention we haven't even thanked you for saving our children," put in the mother.

The man gave the children to the woman, and ran up to Harry quickly. He turned Harry around, expecting to see eyes filled with tears from the pain, and his face screwed up to keep from crying outright. Instead, he saw emotionless pits for eyes, and a swollen jaw.

"Come on, we're taking you to the hospital," said the man, as he led Harry away. Harry didn't struggle, as he didn't want to make a scene, and the man was much stronger than him. The man pulled out his cell phone and dialed. "Hello? I need an ambulance for three children, ages seven, ten, and…"

"Sixteen," supplied Harry.

"Sixteen. Kindling Park off of Ridling Street."

They stood in silence, the man obviously extremely uncomfortable. After a few minutes, the ambulance pulled up, sirens blaring. The three children got in, letting the two parents run to their own car and speed off after the ambulance.

* * *

**What will happen next? This must mean some trouble for the Dursley's, right? Or, more likely, trouble for Harry _from_ the Dursley's.**

**Reviews will be what makes me update fast or slow. Criticism will be accepted and used, so if you wish to flame this story, I won't get mad, I'll just ask why.**

**I'd love all the feedback possible, and give any ideas you want. There probably won't be any relationship for Harry, apologies to all you romantics. However, when and if I do, they probably won't be canon related.**

**Also, if you wish frequent updates, the chapters probably won't be as long as this except for when the muse gets a stranglehold on my mind.**


	2. Screams

**Disclaimer: Do I own this? No. Is this on time? Hell no. Will the next chapter be on time? There's a mild chance.**

**I like this chapter. Hopefully you will too, and that'll stop some of you from wanting to murder me.**

* * *

_Are you ready?_

_No…_

_A flash of green light, a fallen body._

_Hermione._

_Are you ready?_

_No._

_Another flash._

_Ron._

_Are you READY?_

_No!_

_Flash._

_Sirius._

_ARE YOU READY???_

_NO!!!_

_It's your fault! You could have been studying! Training! FIGHTING!_

_NO!!!!!_

_You let people jerk you around on string. You LET them! It's your fault! You killed Cedric! YOU!_

_NO!!! Not Cedric!_

_Hermione!!! YOU!!!_

_NO!!! Hermione…_

_RON!_

_No… not Ron…_

_You're weeping. You're weak. Your parents died because of YOU! You're WEAK!_

_I WON'T BE WEAK! I'LL HEAL, NOT BREAK!!!_

_A flash of green light, blinding. A scream, a horrible, heart-rending scream._

_MUUUUMMMMM!!!!! DAAADDDDDD!!!!!!!!_

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"NNNNNOOOOOOO!!!!!!"

Harry sat up, screaming. In rushed at least a dozen doctors, all looking around wildly. There were three nurses sitting on the bench across from his bed, eyes wide.

"What is going on?" one of the doctors demanded, addressing one of the nurses, not Harry.

She had tears running down her face. "H-he was sleeping. Just sleeping. His jaw had stopped swelling. Then he started whimpering. I couldn't tell if it was from pain or from a nightmare, but it looked like a nightmare, so I just let him go through it. That's usually what I find works best, letting the patients go th-through nightmares, then talking about them, if they wa-"

"Just tell me what happened!"

The nurse stopped babbling and wiped off her tears. "He was just whimpering at first, but then he started moving a little bit, like he wanted to do something, but was being held back. Then he started grunting what sounded like no, and it got louder each time, and he started thrashing. We couldn't get close enough to hold him back from hurting himself; he was swinging around wildly.

"Then he started crying, but just with tears, not sobbing, or noise, or anything. He was still saying no, but this time we could out some other words. He said the word die a couple times, something like too slow, too weak, and some names, sounded like names. It got louder and louder, until he woke up, screaming no, which you heard.

"I-I've only seen that a couple times before, and it was all with people who'd either been attacked, usually by a gang, or had seen multiple people close to them die. It's not something that happens often, or on someone so young…"

The nurse trailed off as she noticed the doctor who'd addressed her motion the other doctors to leave. As they left, he told the nurses to leave as well. When the nurses reached the door, the doctor turned back around to face them and said, "Michelle, why were there so many nurses in here?"

"I-I asked them to come in when he started thrashing."

The doctor nodded and said, "Next time, just press the service button please. That way the other nurses can stay on their duties, and not miss them to help you with yours."

With a dismissing wave of his hand, the doctor turned to Harry who had simply watched the interrogation go on, panting slightly.

Drawing the obvious conclusion from the guarded look on his patient's face, he said softly, "I'm sure you don't want to talk about whatever happened, so let's just pretend it didn't happen. Although, I would like to give you a card to a great psychiatrist before you leave."

Accepting Harry's slow, confused nod, the doctor said, "Well, there's not much I can say. You're jaw healed extremely quickly, and nothing was broken. It's going to be sore for a few days, but other than that, you shouldn't feel any effects. You're Uncle called, and said you'd be able to get home by yourself. Ask the lady at the front desk, Stacy, to show you the way out. Take a left turn from this room, and you'll see it. It's kind of hard to miss. You're free to go, although Mr. Johnson asked to see you. He should be waiting for you out by the front desk."

Harry got up and started to leave, but the doctor caught his arm as Harry passed him. "I'm sorry, but from the lack of previous records, and the old healed injuries, I have to ask, did your uncle or family abuse you at all? Hit you?"

Harry was startled at this question, and looked at the man, hesitating before answering. "N-no." The doctor nodded slowly, obviously not believing, but seeming to not want to try to force anything out of Harry. Letting go of Harry's arm, he walked over to the small desk and began filling out paperwork. As Harry closed the door, the doctor wondered why Harry's Uncle had been so insistent on answering all medical questions for Harry.

Harry walked out the door and followed the directions given to him by the doctor. He'd been extremely surprised when the doctor had asked him if he'd been abused before. Not so much because the doctor was right, but rather because nobody had ever bothered to ask him that before.

Quickly, he spotted the large neon sign pointing out the front desk, and saw the man leaning against it, waiting for him. Sighing resignedly, Harry walked up to the front desk and told the lady sitting behind a large computer, sporting a large friendly smile, Stacy, he thought the doctor had said, through the large glass barrier, that he needed to check out. Stacy nodded, and asked his name.

When he responded, her head snapped up. "What? Could you repeat that?"

"Harry. Harry Potter."

The lady's eyes jumped to his forehead, and widened. "What are you doing here?" She looked at him incredulously, before taking suspicious looks down the halls. "Come in here, quick. The door's to the left, it's unlocked."

Harry started to move towards the door before looking at her again. Taking a glance at Mr. Johnson, who Harry guessed was the father of the children he'd helped, he moved back to the hole between the glass and the rest of the hospital and leaned down, gripping his wand tightly, and said quietly, "I don't know who you are. My wand is ready, put yours down on the counter and slide it to me." To Harry's complete shock, she did it, with a small look of reverence on her face.

Walking briskly to the door with the woman's wand hidden up his sleeve, he opened the door, and steeped into the small room. Walking up to the lady, he said quickly, "Did Dumbledore put you here? What are you doing? And _why_ would you actually give me your wand? What if I had been a Death Eater?"

Stacy blinked. "Erm, nobody posted me here Mr. Potter. I live a few streets down and needed a job. Low on cash, y'know? Oh, right, you probably don't…"

The young woman blinked for a second, and then continued. "Anyway, I think the question is what are _you_ doing here? And," she grinned wickedly, showing extremely white teeth, "I'm also a security guard here. I have a gun under the desk, and I know that Voldemort and his followers are too stupid to think about blocking muggle weapons, so I'm not worried about that. Now, you're answer?"

Harry sighed. _Why the hell did something like this always happen to me? One in a million chance I see a witch near Little Whinging, and I catch the one with a gun. She most be the closest magical person in miles… no magical person is allowed to live in Little Whinging itself… wait a second…_

"I-I can't explain now. I have to go home, or else my Uncle will… throw a fit. Can have you number or something, so I can call and explain before you run to the ministry or something?"

The young woman laughed. "Wow, getting hit on by Harry Potter. Never would've expected this to happen when I got up in the morning. Sure, here, I'll give you my home phone number. Call me when you get a chance, as long as it's not between two and seven at night. I got a short shift." She smiled at him suggestively.

_Well, she seemed to get a lot less flustered all of a sudden… whatever._

And soon, we'll be off to the Dursley's! Off to see the Dursley's, the wonderful Dursley's of… well…

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**Again, this is late. I agree. I'm sorry.**

**It's short too.**

**Damn.**


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